Ages and Stages
by BespectacledSloth
Summary: A collection of Hamada Bros quick fics taking place at various times in their lives. K for Kuteness tho really. Complete for no obligation to write more, but there may be more little drabbles every so often.


I was asked by an anonymous user on tumblr for a story in which, and I quote: "Teeny tot Tadashi tries to figure out what a baby/Hiro is and doesn't seem to get the concept." So I skewed the ages (Tadashi is probably about four or early five years old here) and added some elements of Lady and the Tramp's "What is a Baby?" scene to make it so Tadashi wasn't just befuddled by the idea of a little brother, but by the miniature human/baby concept entirely.

So here's my mediocre attempt at comedy and fluff involving baby siblings.

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><p>The door <em>creeaaaked<em> open slowly, filling the room with the slightest hint of light from the little plastic lantern clasped firmly in the hands of the young boy. He crept into the room on his toes, the lantern swinging at his side and bumping his hip every other step or so, and closed the door just as slowly as he'd opened it, not locking it, but making sure it had shut firmly enough that he wouldn't get caught. He turned to face the dark room, holding his lantern up, and gazed at the structure opposite him. He slowly made his way across the room, braving the dark he was so scared of with the dim light from the little bulb in his lantern guiding his every footstep.

He felt fear in the back of his mind as he got closer to the hulking mass before him. What if it was scary? What if it was disgusting? What if he got hurt? He'd get into so much trouble if he was caught up at this hour, sneaking into this room, messing with it. But he had to see. He hadn't seen it for awhile, and he wanted to see it now. He wanted to study it. He hadn't seen it for very long when he'd gotten to see, and now he wanted to take time and look at it. He had to.

Finally he made it up to the large wooden beast, but it was much too tall for him to see into properly at his height, so he sat the lantern down and set about the room, grabbing books and rolling a footrest over, and finding all manner of things to make a firm standing area and a little set of stairs up to the top of it. It leaned a little this way and that with each step, but he only had to step on those for a second, so it was okay.

He picked his little lantern back up and took slow, gentle steps up the structure until he stood perched on the footstool, nearly two heads higher than his target. He carefully reached down, placing the lantern inside on the soft cushion and blanket-lined interior, and watched with wonder-filled eyes the little thing down below him.

It looked like a hairless puppy to him, and had not changed since he last saw it days ago before it came home, nor had it changed from hours ago when his mother had sat and fed it. His parents said it was called a 'Hiro' or a 'little brother,' but he wasn't sure what that meant. What did it mean to have your very own Hiro? Was a little brother something grand? It didn't seem like it was.

He leaned closer, squinting. It wasn't moving at all. How could this be something exciting?

"Hey," he whispered in a hiss, reaching out to prod the pale pudgy flesh, "Hey, are you alive?" He said a little louder, leaning almost fully over towards his pudgy little Hiro. "Hey, uh... Hiro?" The name left a funny taste in his mouth. Like pennies. Coppery and foreign.

But he did notice it wasn't moving at all. Not wiggling or crying out like it had the past few days, and it was really difficult to see any kind of rise or fall of the chest from breathing. He felt a stab of panic rising into his throat and leaned further over, reaching to touch the little brother, then panicking and turning quickly on his footstool.

He'd go get his mom and dad, then they'd come and fix this and know he didn't mean to break it.

Stepping quickly down from the footstool, he moved to race down the wobbly stack of books that made up his first stair step and felt the sinking feeling of his stomach falling as some of the books slipped out from under him. In a tangle of limbs and open baby books, he fell to the floor with a clatter and lay there in pain for a moment before he heard the noise.

_"WAAAAAAH,"_ shrieked the little ball of pudge from within the large crib.

"Oh no," he said, rolling up onto his knees and gazing around towards the door. When nothing happened instantly, he got up quickly and scrambled around the room. What had his mom used to make it quiet? The bottle. The bottle made it stop. He ran to the table in the corner where a large electronic bottle warmer sat. It had a bottle already connected to it and he quickly started mashing buttons to figure out how to make it fill up when warm milk began to flow into the bottle. The machine made some soft beeping noises, but they were barely heard over the shrieking behind him. He snatched the bottle before it was full, put the strange rubber-like cap on it, and ran back over, hopping up on the footstool as quickly as he could and scooping the little bundle of blankets and flesh out of the crib.

"You're gonna wake mom and dad up!" He hissed, plopping down into the chair that his mom liked to sit in when she fed him, "Quiet, Hiro! You'll get me in trouble!" He tried to shift and hold Hiro as best he could while lifting the bottle to his face, "Here, drink!" He hissed and offered the bottle to it. When the tip of the bottle was in the little mouth, everything grew quiet again, and he heaved a sigh of relief. The only noise in the room was his own breathing and the soft suckling noises from the little bundle. He stared at him, watching him drink the warm milk, and frowned.

"You're weird," he said softly, brushing some of the tiny locks of hair away from its face, "You're really weird, little Hiro."

The door opened moments later and his parents, looking exhausted from being up and down all through the day, lumbered through, expecting to still be hearing the wailing noise. They stopped just inches in the door and looked over at him in the rocking chair, his toes not even touching the ground, a bottle in one hand and the other cradling the tiny baby, and they both smiled a little,

"What are you doing up?" His mom said softly, stepping closer and kneeling beside the rocking chair, "Feeding your brother? Where'd you learn to do that, Tadashi?"

He shrugged, blushing a little as his mom spoke so softly, so sweetly to him. She always doted on him like he was something special, but when the Hiro came along, everything had changed. He didn't see her much, and when he did she was either angry from being tired, or tired from being angry, and he didn't see her smile much unless she was sitting quietly in the rocking chair, "I saw you do it," he whispered, and felt the chair begin to rock a little as she put her hand against the back of it and pushed lightly.

"Hiro seems to like having his big brother to take care of him," she said, fiddling with the blanket around Hiro's face.

"But what is it?" Tadashi asked softly, still confused on the baby concept.

"He's a baby, Tadashi, he's your little brother."

"Was I ever a baby?"

"Yes," he heard his father say as he crossed the room towards them and knelt down on his other side, "For awhile you were, and then you grew into a boy, and now you're a big brother, and Hiro is your baby brother. You have to take care of him, he's always going to need you to watch out for him. Do you understand?"

Tadashi shifted his baby brother in his arms and leaned over enough to plant a soft kiss on his tiny forehead, then he nodded, "I'll take care of him, I promise," he whispered, and smiled when Hiro's eyes came open, gazing up at him beyond the bottle, Tadashi felt a swell of pride in his chest, and a flood of love in his heart.

Hiro was his little baby brother, and he would always be there for him. No matter what.

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><p>And there we go.<p>

Requests can be sent to my tumblr (link on my profile) if you'd like to see something you envision completely mutilated by my sheer attempt to force myself over a writers block spell.

(Sorry, don't mean to be negative, just feeling like a grumpus cause I can't seem to write any new chapters for a few of my fics. Don't mind me.)


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